Akamai rides on the botnet's back to US$584 million quarter

Security biz up, content distribution down

Cloud computing security has driven a 6 per cent year-on-year revenue growth for Akamai, up from $US551 million last year to $584 million for Q3 2016.

The company's third quarter financial report shows its performance and security business unit turned in $345 million in revenue, 19 per cent higher than for the same quarter in 2015.

Its cloud security unit shot up 46 per cent year-on-year, from $65 million in Q3 2015 to $95 million.

Not everybody hate botnets, it seems: CEO Dr Tom Leighton said fighting off DDoS attacks like those that hammered Dyn is “an area where Akamai's unique architecture and ongoing investments in global scale and security innovation continue to make a critical difference”.

Since Akamai was hosting the DDoS-battered site of security researcher Brian Krebs on a pro-bono basis until he needed new accommodation, it would be unfair to point to that incident as a riposte.

The growing security business was a handy offset to a year-on-year 14 per cent decline in its Media Delivery Solutions business, to $188 million. Service and support solutions rose a creditable 17 per cent to $51 million.

Nearly all of the growth was offshore: the US was nearly flat at $404 million, while international revenue was up 20 per cent year-on-year to $180 million. ®